Hammett

by Joe Gores

  ‘Just working for wages in those days, Dom.’ He toasted silently with his glass, then tossed it off. ‘It’s a little different now.’

  Pronzini nodded. He leaned closer, so their shoulders touched. ‘You mean that friend of yours. That Atkinson guy. A tough break.’

  Without looking at the big Italian, Hammett said in his soft drink-slurred voice, ‘What time was he in that night, Dom?’

  ‘In here? Here? That night?’ Pronzini reared back as if dismayed. He said humbly, ‘Well, gee, Mr Hammett, I guess he could have been. But you see how busy-’

  ‘Like the morgue that night, Dom.’

  Still hunched over the bar, Hammett poured. It was excellent whiskey.

  ‘Well, Mr Hammett, even so! I didn’t know the man…’

  ‘Had a couple of drinks with him, Dom.’ He held up his shot glass as if displaying it. ‘Like us, tonight.’

  The jovial Italian’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘I’m not sure I like that, Mr Hammett.’

  Hammett looked directly at him for the first time. It was four minutes before two o’clock. His voice was softly suggestive.

  ‘Who killed him, Dom?’

  ‘Whew!’ Pronzini shook his head in a dazed way, at the same time raising a hand at the bartender. ‘It ain’t right, Mr Hammett, you coming around trying to jack me off that way. We have one more drink; you’d better leave.’

  The bartender stood across the stick from them, his hands on the varnished wood. ‘Yessir, Mr Pronzini?’

  ‘Mr Hammett wants one for the road, Tony. Take this piss away and bring us a bottle of the real stuff. The real stuff. Okay?’

  ‘Yessir, Mr Pron-’

  ‘No thanks, Dom.’ Hammett had stepped back a pace from the bar. His pose matched that of the bartender’s, with his right hand a bare inch from the heavy ebony walking stick.

  ‘Tony,’ said Pronzini in a flat voice.

  Tony’s hand was six inches away from the bottle of Dunbar’s when Hammett moved. No drunk ever moved that fast. His stick smashed down on Tony’s hand. Tony screamed and tried to jerk the shattered hand away. Hammett put his weight on the stick, grinding it down against the trapped hand.

  ‘No Mickeys, Dom. No back room. Not me.’ He lifted the stick and pointed it toward the blue-chinned bouncer, who was reaching under his left arm. ‘No guns, Dom. Or I smash your skull while he’s getting it out.’

  Pronzini waved off the bouncer. The bartender had crashed backwards against the bottles, clutching his pulped hand. Pronzini swiveled his heavy head past the suddenly silent, staring patrons toward the equally silent band.

  ‘Play, you goddamn boogies!’ he yelled.

  The piano player started a fast riff of ‘Cemetery Blues.’ The drummer and brass caught in raggedly. They settled in behind the vocalist’s body English.

  ‘Enjoy yourself, folks!’ Pronzini boomed. ‘Just a little joke.’

  Faces turned, dulling as curiosity left them. Bodies began swaying to the beat. Somebody laughed. Somebody dropped a glass. On the floor, somebody started dancing. Pronzini turned back to Hammett, his face dangerously suffused with blood.

  ‘How do you think you’re getting out of here, wise guy?’

  ‘Not feet-first like Vic, that’s a pipe.’ His smile touched only the muscles around his mouth. ‘I was outside, in the alley, when they carried him out, Dom. His head looked like a pumpkin.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Pronzini softly but explosively.

  A second bouncer had come from the rear door behind the partition in the drapes. Pronzini looked at Hammett from eyes ugly with triumph. It was a dozen seconds before two o’clock.

  ‘You’re going out the back way with me, Hammett, and then-’

  The front door came off its hinges with a tearing sound to smash into kindling against the blue-chinned bouncer’s back. He hit the floor nose-first, his scalp spraying blood. A woman screamed like a broken calliope pipe.

  A massive baldheaded Chinese ran lightly over the fallen gorilla. He wore soft slippers and gray canvas trousers and no shirt. His immense naked torso was splattered with the downed bouncer’s blood. In his right hand waved and glittered a lather’s hatchet sharpened to a razor’s edge. His eyes were wild; a high keening noise came from between his foam-flecked lips.

  He skittered to a stop in the center of the dance floor, as the people jostled back with terror-filled faces. Hammett thought he was doing a beautiful job. His hatchet arced deadly patterns in the air.

  But with a muttered curse, the remaining bouncer woke up. His hands darted for his gun. As it did, two more massive highbinders appeared on silent slippered feet from the split in the drapery through which he had come himself. They wore loose cotton shirts sashed at the waist over canvas trousers.

  As his gun cleared its holster, they engulfed him from behind. The bouncer hit the floor like a dropped sack of grain, bleeding but alive. The front door belched four more binders. Two cradled tommy guns.

  Pandemonium greeted the choppers. Pronzini’s hand was frozen halfway under his jacket. The Chinese took positions against the walls. The band was playing ‘Alabamy Bound’ as if there were no tomorrow. The uncrippled bartender kept his hands spread wide on the bar in an attempt to deny ownership of them. The man Hammett had maimed was out cold.

  Only Hammett had not turned as the Orientals burst in. He poured a fresh drink from the bottle he hadn’t let Tony take away. He spoke to Pronzini without looking at him.

  ‘They’re from the Bo Sin Sere tong. They like their killing.’ He finally looked over. ‘Who killed Vic?’

  ‘ You brought these chinks-’

  ‘Who killed Vic?’ said Hammett.

  From the back room came the sound of breaking wood. Pronzini went white-faced. There was a crash from back there, a loud crash followed by the reek of raw whiskey.

  Hammett felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he looked up into the expressionless face of Qwong Lin Get.

  ‘Give out a couple of cases to the customers, compliments of Dom,’ said Hammett. ‘Smash the rest of it.’ He turned to Pronzini. ‘I figured you’d have most of the Canadian stuff cached here.’

  He had to raise his voice over the wailing of the band, the shouts of the customers. One woman had begun smashing a chair on a table, laughing hysterically. The Chinese lined the walls like statues.

  ‘You can’t get away with this,’ said Pronzini hoarsely.

  ‘Who killed Vic?’

  A shout of joy went up from the trapped customers as the free booze began circulating. The good prewar stuff, down from Canada. Another chair was kindled, and another. A table was upended and its legs torn off.

  ‘You… you’re ruining me!’ cried Pronzini.

  Hammett sipped his drink. A hurled bottle shattered against the revolving mirrored ball. Pieces of glass and bits of dislodged mirror rained down on the dancers, who ignored them.

  ‘Who killed Vic?’

  Pronzini’s eyes were getting desperate. ‘You’ll make me a dead man.’

  ‘So Vic did get it here.’

  ‘But you said-’

  Over the din of the disintegrating speakeasy, Hammett said, ‘Don’t you know a con when you hear one, Dom? Home in my bed.’

  Pronzini hurled his glass to the floor in anger. ‘Goddammit!’ he yelped, ‘you son of-’

  A sweeping paw smashed him half over the bar. He twisted off it, ashen-faced with rage, but a glittering hatchet slammed into the wood so close to his head that a lock of severed black hair fell to the floor. Pronzini froze; he didn’t even try to jerk his head away. He stared up at the seminude Oriental giant with stark terror.

  ‘Shouldn’t make threatening moves, Dom.’

  The dais on which the band played was being rocked. Hammett was pouring himself another shot. He was getting mellow. They wouldn’t have much more time. The din would be reaching the street by now.

  ‘Who’d you call when you recognized him, Dom? Griff or Boyd?’

  ‘Boyd runs errands,’
Pronzini said with a sigh.

  ‘Who’d Griff call?’ Hammett sipped, a tall, lean, erect, very correct figure amid the wild party evolving from the destruction of Pronzini’s speakeasy.

  ‘I don’t know, that’s God’s truth. Only Griff knows. All right, I slipped Atkinson a Mickey. And I left the alley door open for the guy to come in. But Atkinson was alive when I seen him last.’

  Some draperies were afire on the far side of the dance floor. Pronzini looked that way, agonized, just as the dais slowly collapsed. But he shook his head.

  ‘I ain’t got nothing else to say to you, Hammett, not even if your boys wreck the place.’

  ‘They already have.’

  The band went off the edge of the dais in a crash of instruments. The upended torcher wore no step-ins under her tight red sequins. Four men were fighting drunkenly in the middle of the floor. Nine more, and as many women, arms linked, were swaying back and forth and chanting: ‘Where-was-Moses-when-the-lights-went-out?’

  ‘Down in the cellar eating sauerkraut,’ said Hammett. He picked up his hat and stick. He said, ‘I talked with that reporter who did the series on bootlegging last year. He told me Egan Tokzek was a runner for you.’

  ‘Tokzek?’ said Pronzini in a dazed voice.

  ‘What did he do for you besides run rum?’

  ‘What the hell else was he good for?’ he burst out in remembered grievance. ‘You can’t trust them snow-noses for nothing but donkey-work.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Hammett. He set the Wilton on his silvery hair at a properly rakish angle, then tipped it to the speechless bootlegger. ‘Thanks for the drink, Dom.’

  He walked through the wreckage toward the gaping front door, very erect, very proper, no hint of drunkenness in his movements. Behind him the binders funneled down to go through the door like bats leaving a cave. From far off came the clanging of a fire truck.

  23

  Boyd Mulligan was doing the Examiner crossword and waiting for the secretary to get back from lunch when the lean stranger’s shadow fell across his newspaper.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Is Mr Mulligan about?’ The stranger’s snap-brim gray Wilton was pulled down to shadow his face.

  ‘I’m Boyd Mulligan.’

  ‘It’s your uncle I want.’

  ‘He won’t be in until three o’clock. Give me the message.’

  The stranger hesitated. He squared broad lean shoulders under his overcoat and leaned closer. ‘It’s from…’ He leaned closer yet. ‘ Him.’

  ‘Him?’ Mulligan said stupidly, trying to appear wise.

  ‘ You know.’ The eyes darted to the door at the far end of the room. ‘Is there a private office? Anyone coming by in the street can see me in here, and if they do…’

  Boyd, thoroughly confused, left his blond-wood swivel and led the way.

  Griffith Mulligan had shared the private office with no one since his brother’s death a few years before. There were filing cabinets along the left wall, with layers of thick asbestos sandwiched between their sheet steel sides. They were always locked, and Griff Mulligan carried the only key. The secret lives of half the powerful in San Francisco were locked away in these drawers; the secrets of the other half were locked away in Griff Mulligan’s shrewd Irish skull.

  Boyd turned to face the stranger in the middle of the room. ‘Is this private enough for you?’ he demanded, without bothering to conceal the sneer in his voice. He wished the damned girl would get back; he was starving to death.

  The stranger slid his eyes down the blank right-hand wall where the room’s only window had been bricked in and plastered over years before.

  ‘This’ll do,’ he said.

  He put a sinewy open hand against Boyd’s face and shoved. Hard.

  Boyd windmilled into Griff’s chair. The chair tipped over backward. He slammed knees-first into the wall and yowled. He struggled to his feet still too shocked for either fear or anger.

  ‘Are you crazy? I’m Boyd Mulligan.’

  The stranger stood in the center of the room with his legs set wide, leaning toward Boyd as if against a strong wind.

  ‘And I’m Dashiell Hammett,’ he said.

  ‘Ham… Hammett?’

  He felt his lower lip tremble. He pushed the lank black hair from his eyes. He wasn’t ready for this. He, well hell, he just…

  ‘Dorothy… will be back from lunch any-’

  ‘Twenty-two minutes,’ said Hammett. ‘Sit down, punk.’

  Boyd found himself righting his uncle’s chair and lowering himself gingerly into it, keeping a tight grip on the wooden arms. His cheeks burned. Wait until he put out the call on this bastard! He’d have them start by breaking his shins, and then his forearms, and then smashing his kneecaps, and… But dammit, his uncle had said nobody touched Hammett. And what his uncle said…

  ‘I just came to put you on notice, punk,’ said Hammett. ‘I’m going to fry the man who killed Vic Atkinson. And the men who-’

  ‘Listen, I don’t-’

  ‘ And the men who pointed him in Vic’s direction.’

  Boyd fought his panic. Hammett was just trying to trick him into spilling something. Well, Boyd Mulligan didn’t spill. He was tougher and smarter than that.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You know, punk.’ Hammett stepped closer, eyes on fire. ‘Why do you suppose I took apart Pronzini’s last night?’

  ‘But the papers said Chinese gangst-’

  ‘Jesus!’ Hammett laughed gratingly. ‘You are just an errand boy, aren’t you? Well, tell your uncle that Pronzini spilled his guts. To me. About the Mickey Finn in Vic’s drink. About calling your uncle. About who your uncle called. Everything. Everything, punk.’

  Boyd was licking his lips, again and again. His heart seemed to be thundering in his chest. ‘I… he wouldn’t… Atkinson didn’t..’

  Hammett crossed the office in long strides. He jerked open the door. He spun abruptly on his heel to look back.

  ‘You ever seen a man who’s been hung, punk? He ends up with a neck three feet long.’

  He was gone. Boyd, stunned, dragged himself from his uncle’s swivel chair. He reached the windows of the front office just in time to see Hammett striding down Kearny toward the Hall of Justice.

  The Hall of Justice! With shaking hands, he reached for the telephone.

  ‘You had fun last night,’ accused Jimmy Wright.

  Hammett drank bad coffee from the rotund detective’s gas ring. Through the window he could see a strip of the Southern Pacific baggage shed roof. Just a week ago, he’d been standing there looking at Vic’s pulped features. A week, and nobody tagged for it. But…

  ‘Had some more fun this morning. You sure that wireman has the Mulligan Bros phones covered?’

  ‘I just came from the phone company. They’re covered.’

  Hammett lowered his coffee cup and looked in as if waiting for something to surface. ‘Who stepped on this bug?’ he asked. Laughter brimmed in his voice. He looked very youthful, his eyes sparkled. ‘I just left Mulligan Bros. Bought breakfast for their secretary the other morning and picked up their routine. When she was out to lunch and Uncle Griff wasn’t in yet, I went in and pushed Boydie-boy around a bit.’

  ‘How is he?’ asked the op in an interested voice.

  ‘He sings soprano. I’m hoping he used the phone after I left.’

  The op shrugged, and fed him the straight line. ‘So he calls Uncle Griff…’ He liked to watch Hammett work.

  ‘When he did, Uncle Griff should have been sitting in Dave’s Barber Shop on McAllister and Fillmore, waiting for a Mr Hambledon to show up with some hot mining stock tips. Dave’s Barber Shop isn’t a place Uncle Griff ever goes.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be Mr Dashiell Hambledon, would it?’

  ‘The very same. Incognito for this important occasion.’

  In crisp sentences, he outlined what had happened at Pronzini’s the night before, to appropriate comme
nt and a lot of chuckles from the op. Finally he stood up and put on his hat.

  ‘How does the interrogation of the police brass look?’

  ‘An Inspector O’Keefe sounds brittle. And I think the lieutenant on the take from Molly is starting to get religion. I’ve got both of them coming back tonight. I’ll be taking them on myself. Want to sit in?’

  ‘Let me call you later.’ From the door, he asked, ‘What did the Pinks have to say about Tokzek?’

  The op snapped his fingers. ‘Good you asked. Meinbress didn’t know me, so he wanted to check with some of the other boys before he looked in the files for-’

  ‘Meinbress?’

  ‘He took over as Resident Sup. when Geauque went out. I’m supposed to call him this afternoon, and he’ll give me whatever they have on him.’

  When Hammett walked up the hill from a Geary Street car three hours later, Preacher Dan Laverty was leaning against the side of a dusty parked Reo, arms folded on his chest. He was talking with the wispy Frenchwoman who ran the hand laundry in the streetlevel shop below Hammett’s apartment building.

  She went back inside with a dissatisfied look on her face when Hammett arrived. The Preacher faced Hammett squarely. He was troubled, his hard cop’s eyes worried.

  ‘Ah… Iook, ah, Dash, what do I hear about you being mixed up in this thing last night at Dominic Pronzini’s joint?’

  ‘The tong binders?’ Hammett shrugged. ‘I had to put pressure on Pronzini, and they were the only people in town I could think of who wouldn’t be scared to go up against him.’

  ‘Yeah-h-h…’ Laverty was hesitant, oddly unsure of himself. He began, ‘Dash, I want to…’ He stopped and shook his head. He sighed. In a tired voice, he asked, ‘What made you want to pressure Pronzini anyway? Why do you think he had anything to do with Vic’s death?’

  Hammett ticked off his points on his fingers.

  ‘Vic called me that night, around one o’clock, from the YMCA on The Embarcadero. He was given directions and the password to Pronzini’s joint at the cigar store in the Hotel Commodore. With that, I went after Pronzini. He admitted, to me, that he fed Vic a Mickey. He admitted that he called Griff Mulligan. He admitted that someone came around to take a look at Vic. But he claimed that the last he saw, Vic was alive.’